Ohio teacher evaluations get new standards

Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

The new Ohio Teacher Evaluation System will place greater emphasis on measuring how much students learn and how teachers go about their job.

The setup, presented to the Capacity Committee of the state Board of Education, “should be a tool to inform employment and dismissal decisions [and] opportunities for advancement,” according to the Department of Education, which must finalize the recommendations by the end of the year.

Teacher evaluations are undergoing a fundamental shift in Ohio, from a focus on inputs, such as a teachers’ certification or expertise, to what teachers and their students actually do in the classroom. The department noted that studies have shown that 99 percent of teachers are all rated the same, and most evaluations don’t take student achievement into account.

“More emphasis is now appropriately being placed on measuring teacher effectiveness based on practices that they apply in their classroom and how much students actually learn,” the report said.

Education First, the consulting firm that analyzed Ohio’s system, wants to make sure the state’s evaluation model is among the best in the country, said the company’s Susan Bodary, who lives in Ohio.

“Teachers enter the profession to be great,” she said. “They want to help students.”

Katie Cour, another consultant from Education First, stressed that the pilot program put together by the state can’t be expected to work flawlessly from the time it is put into place.

“You’ll never have a perfect system at the beginning of implementation,” she said. Cour told the committee members to think of the plan in the same way software developers thought about their products — there would be an OTES 2.0 and 3.0, which might not look anything like the first plan.

The state plan has a basic four-part system for evaluating teachers: goal setting, teacher performance, professionalism and student growth.

In keeping with the focus on student achievement — and a new state law — student growth will be half of a teacher’s evaluation.

One of the major recommendations made by Education First was to simplify the goal setting and evaluation. Previously, teachers would have to complete a nearly 30-question form to evaluate their performance in the classroom. This, Cour said, could lead to teachers filling out the form just to get it done.

By reducing the evaluation to a few basic questions, it makes it easier for teachers and administrators work on ways to improve, she said.

The teacher evaluation stage has different options for teachers of different levels, incorporating both unannounced and announced observations, and a yearlong professional project for more-experienced teachers.

Schools getting federal Race to the Top money are expected to follow the new standards closely once they are approved and undergo a pilot test; the rest of Ohio districts can use them as a “resource model.”